Embodiments of the present invention relate to computerized accounting systems and, more particularly, to such systems that operate pursuant to specialized accounting procedures that might be required, for example, by governmental agencies and the like.
Public sector organizations such as government agencies are required to record their financial transactions with a greater degree of specificity than, for example, private firms. Thus, accounting procedures that govern the records for private firms are not completely satisfactory for these public sector organizations because they record incomplete information regarding the organizations' activity. In a private firm, for example, only the actuals may be recorded on a general ledger. A government agency, however, may be expected to also record budget related activities on the general ledger. In the United States, regulations promulgated pursuant to the Joint Financial Management Improvement Program (JFMIP) define the accounting procedures for such entities.
Many Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) vendors sell to these government agencies various computerized financial products, which are designed to support their financial management. Often, these financial products create financial documents from original transaction documents for accounting purposes. These financial documents are required to conform to the accounting procedures, such as the JFMIP, imposed on the government agency. Among various financial products provided by ERP vendors, a budgetary ledger is one of the most often tested components in selecting one of these financial products. Often, the budgetary ledger maintains account balances for budget relevant processes or transactions. The budgetary ledger is typically interactive with a general ledger, which maintains account balances for not only the budget relevant transactions, but also the actuals, receivables, and other types of transactions, to ensure that the agency is managing the funds pursuant to defined limitations. Put differently, the budgetary ledger may post budget relevant transactions to the general ledger to maintain account balances for budget related transactions.
SAP AG, the assignee of the present invention, included a budgetary ledger unit in prior versions of its R/3 product that handled the reporting requirements for governmental organizations. The budgetary ledger unit, however, was deemed cumbersome for its users. For each transaction, the budgetary ledger unit required an operator to manually cycle through a master configuration table to selectively indicate which of a universe of possible predecessor conditions apply to a given reporting requirement and to derive applicable accounts. FIG. 1 is an illustration of an exemplary master configuration table used by the budgetary ledger unit in prior versions of its R/3 product. The table has seventeen different data fields for each transaction. The budgetary ledger has to maintain values for all of the seventeen data fields, and compares each transaction against all of the data fields to determine relevant accounts. As a result, only one or two relevant accounts are typically expected. Thus, it is very difficult to set up and maintain the configuration table. It is cumbersome and time consuming to perform the account derivation using the master configuration table. Further, this budgetary ledger unit is suitable for use with only one nation's reporting requirements (currently, the United States). Although other nations are instituting similar recording requirements or are expected to do so, the prior version of the R/3 product is not suited for ready extension to accommodate such reporting requirements.
Accordingly, there is a need in the art for a computerized accounting system that provides for easy configuration of public sector reporting requirements and is readily applicable to multiple different recording policies.